Different Kinds of Drills

Drill on Five-Finger Positions on Treble and Bass Staves. The positions are typically shown in the early literature. The piano teacher drills the student in finding these hand positions and then may call for the "five-finger position of the right hand, treble staff, key of G," or "the five-finger position of the left hand, bass staff, key of A-minor," etc. This drill can be reversed by the teacher playing the phrase and the student pointing to the notation in his book. This helps with early fundamentals in learning keyboard fingering.

Theory of Music. Naming the notations, key signatures, names of chords, and so forth are learned incidentally and not through drill. After a while when these are consistently called by their names, students will soon associate the correct names with familiar characters. Drilling theory is distasteful to young children and unproductive. But once notations and their names are familiar, it is good to occasionally question the student to be sure that the association is correct. Don't explain, merely use and call by name. Organized explanations will come in later years.

The Tonic Chord. The tonic chord is learned as it appears in the literature, and then serves for drill similar to the drill on the five-finger positions. All chord study should be presented as sound, not merely as notes.

Writing Music. As chords are studied in later lessons, students can write chords in predesignated keys. Later students are encouraged to discover experimentally the application of these chords in harmonizing the melodies, and to write the chords in the staves of predesignated pieces themselves.

Two-Handed Melodies. Drills can be developed in finding the two-hand positions and alternating the hands on the keyboard. The alternation of hands must be practiced until it can be done without an appreciable break in the legato passage. These little studies should never be played with both hands together.

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